Ball Turret Bill

Bill Ellett is a small man, white of beard and hair, with a tenor voice turned raspy from endless autumns of barking directions at high school marching bands. After 39 years as a band director, teacher and musician, he enjoys a relaxed retirement, tends to his yard above the Sweetwater Valley in El Cajon, and revels in telling tales of his six grandchildren, and the successes of his three children: the hydrologist son in Tucson; the violinist daughter with the Colorado Symphony in Boulder; the finance grad daughter who works in purchasing for her alma mater, SDSU. Looking at him, you'd never figure Bill Ellett for a war hero - yet his twenty-five missions as a B-17 ball turret gunner, and his two confirmed kills, and one probable, qualify him.

We met while contemplating the ball turret of Sentimental Journey, the B-17G restored by the Confederate Air Force and displayed at Gillespie Field last May. Much later, in the study of his home, I asked him how tight were the confines of a ball turret.

"The first time I ever got in one," said Bill, "I didn't know if I could handle it or not. I never did like it, but I handled it. And after you've done it for a while, you get to the point, especially after you've been in combat a few times, where you say, 'Well, I'll never make it anyway, so what the hell's the use of worrying about it.' You live for your next forty-eight hour pass to London.

"There were constant thoughts in my mind," he continued, "For two or three hours on my second mission when I was alone there in the waist and tail, where I had accepted the fact that I wasn't gonna make it - I thought, 'There's just no way you can keep going with that many people after you - they're comin' at you all the time and shooting this airplane - you can see holes everywhere you look ... one of those is gonna hit you."

His second mission - the first combat mission with the stateside crew Bill had eaten, slept, drank and trained with for six months - taught him intimately about flak and fighters ... and about grief. Among the 10 members of the crew was his best friend, Harold MacGregor, the radio operator.

"Mac and I probably were the two closest of the whole crew - we did everything together: going out on dates, together, going to town, together, gettin' loaded ... and whatever you did in those days. We were very, very close, and I wrote home a lot about him - my mother felt like she knew him as well as I did."

Bill's unit, the 390th Bomb Group, contributed 18 of the 264 B-17's that the Eighth Air Force had ordered into the sky to attack Munster, Germany on Sunday, October 10, 1943. Estimates were that the Luftwaffe had over five hundred fighters available to defend the target, and three hundred of them ripped another unit, the 100th Bomb Group, to shreds - in forty-five minutes the 'Bloody Hundredth' lost 12 of its 14 aircraft before ever reaching the target. In twenty- five minutes, the 390th lost 8 of its 18 aircraft. Along with Me-109's, 110's and Fw 190's, there were Ju-88's and Dornier's flying parallel courses, firing air to air rockets at the B-17's.

The fighters attacked until the bombers neared the target, then skedaddled when they were within flak range. "They won't come in and fight with you over the target - they'll stay out of the flak, too," Bill said, with a smile. "The fighters are scary, but what's really scary is the flak. You can't do anything about that, when you're on your bomb run and you're flying flat and level as you can, no evasive action possible." And over heavily defended targets like Munster and the Ruhr Valley, the flak was so thick, " ... You'd think you could get out and walk on the smoke from the shells bursting."

It was after they had dropped their bombs, with the bomb bay doors still open and the bombardier still flying the airplane, that the worst began. "A direct burst of flak hit behind the number two engine, Bill said, "And left a round hole about three and a half feet in diameter in the wing - it was huge. It winged us over - knocked us right on our back - and the plane started to go down in a spin. Later, Sabel (the pilot) said he rang the bail out bell - he didn't think he could get it under control - but nobody could hear it, the flak had wrecked the communications, too. Of course, it threw an awful lot of shrapnel as it burst up through the fuselage and out."

By the time Sabel regained control of the aircraft, they had fallen considerably below and behind their bomb group and the collective, defensive firepower it held. Bill noticed three chutes below him and concluded that they had come from his plane. He struggled out of the turret, but it took a long time.

"I was crawling out of the turret as fast as I could," he said, "And I finally got out of there and noticed that the waist gunners were gone - I could see back through there and the tail gunner was gone, too. So I thought, 'Well, they're all gone, I'm here alone - I'd better get the hell out of here'." He scrambled to the already jettisoned door, strapped on a chute and prepared to jump. "I was leaning in the door, and was kind of dizzy ... in fact, I was very dizzy," he said. He had been without oxygen for some minutes and hypoxia had already kicked in.

About then, Bill heard the twin-fifties from the top turret and realized he wasn't alone - only it took a while to comprehend just how much company he really had. "I had sense enough to think, 'Well, the guns are firing up there,'" he said, "They were shaking the ship - I could feel it. So, I rolled back into thewaist and plugged into the waist gunner's oxygen outlet and got to breathing and got straightened up ... and there were fighters all around us, coming at us from all directions."

The German fighter pilots were no dummies - they'd look at an airplane to see where the guns were operating and attack where they weren't. Said Bill, "If the ball turret is moving around, they know somebody's in there watching for them, and if the waist guns are moving, they would know. Since those guns were all stationary, they were attacking from the back and the sides and the bottom. So, I started firing the waist guns, and I went from waist gun to waist gun, and even went back to the to the tail gun, and I was firing there, too. I don't know, it was such a confusing time ... I know I hit some, but whether I knocked any down, or not, I'm really not sure. Then, the fighters began concentrating underneath - they could see the ball turret's guns straight down - so I went to see if I could do something there."

There, he found that the inside of the ball turret had been destroyed, when one or more 20 mm shells had stuck it. The gears were shot up and the sight glass, behind which he would have been sitting, was smashed. "One side of it had a big hole in it, and ... ," he said, then paused - and chose not to state the obvious:had he remained in the turret, he would have died. "So, I stayed with the waist guns and my tail gun until we got back over water ... probably a couple of hours of that."

Once they reached the English Channel, the fighters departed and, with the his aircraft at an appreciably lower altitude, Bill believed he could relax. "So I took off my mask and started up front," he said. "That's when I discovered Mac in the radio room. He'd been hit in the face with a 20mm shell." He paused at the horror of the image. "If ... if I'd a had any food in me I know I'd have lost it. It was ... the most ... difficult thing I was ever called on to do - to stop ... and do something with him. And I thought, 'Well, I gotta do it,' so I turned his head over and ... he was cold, frozen - so I pulled the rip cord on his parachute, took it out, and wrapped his head up in it as best as I could, propped him up a little bit better and ... went up to the front."

Bill struggled with the memory. "We were like brothers," he said. "In fact, after he was killed, my mother and his mother corresponded with each other until they both died. Regularly. And they'd never seen each other ... but we had spoken about each other, so much, to them, that they felt they were almost kin. When I went up into the radio room and I saw him lying there, like he was ... it just made me so sick ... I had to swallow a few times and ... force myself to be able to get him covered up. That bothered me ... I didn't sleep very well for quite a while - then for years afterward it would bother me."

Up front, Sabel and the copilot struggled to keep the battered bomber airborne as it crossed the channel but, said Bill, "The plane had just been shot up so badly that they had no intercom, no aileron control, no rudder control. There were one or two cables hanging on ... the columns were just ... (he makes a rough shaking motion with his arms) ... going like that, and the poor co-pilot had wrapped his legs around the column, and his arms around it, trying to hold it, while Sabel did some kind of manipulation with the trim tabs and [tried to] fly it that way. We were losing altitude all the time, so we headed for the 100th Group field, which is right over the southern coast of England, near Hastings."

He read to me from Castles in the Air, Martin Bowman's 1984 release from Patrick Stephens Publishing: 'Rusty Lode flown by LT, Robert W Sabel, had over 750 holes in her fuselage, huge gaps in both wings, rudder and left aileron and both flaps shot away. The bomber had been hit badly before the target, but Sabel forced his way home through incessant fighter attacks. However, not all his crew believed they would make it home. William L Ellett, Sabel's ball gunner, saw three parachutes opening below the aircraft. He knew they must have come from his aircraft, so he climbed out of the turret and saw both waist guns hanging limp with their gunners' gone. The tailgunner had also left the aircraft. ... Ellett scrambled back to the waist door and saw a blood-stained flak suit on the floor, then the top turret guns opened up and he knew he was not alone, after all. Sabel managed to land at Thorpe Abbotts with only two minutes fuel supply remaining. Engineering officers declared that the feat was nothing short of a miracle'.

"We made it," said Bill, "And there were none after that that were as rough, but there were enough losses every time you went out that, when you started figuring the odds, you thought 'God, I've got 23, or 22, or 20, more of these? I'm not gonna make it.' Not very many did at that time in the war." In the four days before and after Munster, the aforementioned 100th Bomb Group lost 19 flight crews, and 20 of its 21 operational aircraft.

Of the three crew members who had bailed out, Bill was told that Joe Tolan had died in a German hospital from the wounds he sustained in the attack, but the other two, Leon Tennant and Marvin Cox, survived the rest of the war in a German POW camp - they've since died. Bob Sabel, the pilot, got a job after the war with the CIA, then ran a detective agency in LA. He and Bill and George Woodcock - Woody the top gunner and engineer - all met at a reunion of the 390th Bomb Group, ten years ago at Davis- Mothan Air Force base in Tucson. Sabel died two years ago, but Woody, who has a daughter living in San Diego, gets together with Bill at least once a year.

Bill completed all twenty-five missions with nary a scratch, surviving a bail out over the English coast when an engine overran and caught fire, and another mission to Munster (a milk run, compared with the first). For his efforts, he was awarded the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters, and the Distinguished Flying Cross. When he returned stateside, he became a ball turret instructor, then trained in B-29's and was preparing to fight in the Pacific, when they dropped the atomic bombs.

After he mustered out, he vowed he'd never fly again - a vow he kept until 1960, and only a disabled car and a need to be at work the next morning forced him to break it. He got his degree in music from Idaho State, taught school, met and married his wife, taught for nine years in Nevada, then twenty-six more at Granite Hills High. The last couple of years he said, "I didn't feel up to chasing the marching band around all day," so he finished his career teaching history.

The images of Mac were never far away, though, occasionally haunting his dreams. " ... And then I began to think, when we talked about WWII, that relating some personal experiences to the kids would be good for them. It'd be interesting, and not only that, but it might improve relations - they might think of me as more of a human being instead of a teacher. So, I began to tell them stories, occasionally, when we got to that unit on WWII. Jeez, it got so that I was famous in the Grossmont District for telling stories about the Eighth Air Force. Other teachers would substitute another class for me, while I came to their history class and spent a day or two with their kids. And so, I did that quite a bit, until I retired. And the kids really enjoyed listening to it."

And re-telling those tales from so long ago made it possible for Bill to deal with it, himself, as well.

B-17's rock!

And their crews were the cream of the crop.

I just got a book about the "Memphis Belle" which states that of 200 crewmen at this one briefing late in 1942, 68 were killed and 78 were captured. It makes Pickett's Charge look like a walk in the park.

This is all so incredible:

"The objective could not be clearly identified during the initial approach so [Lt. Col.] Thorup took the lead box through a 360 degree turn making a fresh run after the other two boxes had bombed and turned away. The twenty aircraft of the 94th, in spite of being under more or less continuous fighter attack, managed to place 73% of their bombs within 1,000 ft of the assigned aiming point and all within 2,000 ft. The 447th also bombed very accurately and placed 74% within 1,000 ft. Extensive damage was caused and every major installation was hit."

"The first mission fulfilled under the new directive was the disruption of the synthetic rubber plant at Huls...Although the Eighth's first large scale penetration of the Ruhr, the most heavily defended area of the Third Reich at that time, the mission resulted in the most effective bombardment of a strategic target yet achieved...just under one quarter of the bomb tonnage dropped, exploded within the factory area rendering the plant inoperative for a month. Full production was not resumed for six months."

--The Mighty Eighth, by Roger Freeman

"Despite the punishment they took, both the Regensburg and Schweinfurt raiders managed to inflict substantial damage on their targets. At Regensburg every important building was hit by incendiary or high explosive bombs."

--The Airwar in Europe, Time Life books

--The Mighty Eighth, by Roger Freeman

--The Airwar in Europe, Time Life books

"Over 900 bombers were detailed and 886 actually dispatched over the Essex coast for plants in the Leipzig area; although the two leading combat wings attacked an FW 190 repair depot at Zwickau in the same area which, apart from its own importance, served to mislead the enemy as to the chief objectives...Soon after the leading bombers of the 3rd Division had turned north-east after a south-easterly thrust across Belgium, they were met by an estimated 200 enemy interceptors. Spaatz was correct in his speculation that the Luftwaffe would rise to meet strikes against oil plants, although at this point the enemy could not have known the bombers' ultimate destination. From 12.25 hrs. for 35 minutes, the two composite 4th wing formations headed for Zwickau experienced determined oppostion. Mass saturation tactics were pressed so close that at least one rammed a B-17. From this ordeal the 4th emerged in some disorder. Colonel Vandevanter flying with his 385th Group in the lead, ordered the formation to reduce speed so that others could reform; this undoubtedly added to the good bombing later achieved-- the 385th managed to place 97% of their bombs within 2,000 ft of the aiming point.

Four times the 4th Wing was attacked on the mission, losing 11 Fortresses, 7 from the 447th group. The 3rd division's 45th and 13th wings attacked the Brux oil plant leaving it burning and inoperative, while Liberators of 2nd Division achieved similar results at Zeitz and Bohlen; great damage too, was inflicted at Merseburg and Lutzendorf by the 1st Division."

--"The Mighty Eighth" p. 141-42 by Roger Freeman

"Lt. Col Ross Milton, formerly of Polebrook and now of the 91st, was allergic to tough rides. It seemed every time he led the Wing, he would ineveitably wind up in the front position, whether the mission was so laid out or not, and the mission would meet violent opposition. Oschersleben was no exception. Leading the combat wing formation, he found himself in front and, for the most part, without fighter escort almost throughout the trip. Over an hour before reaching the target, the Wing was jumped by a large number of Jerry fighters. The lead aircraft was badly hit. An engine was lost, several cannon shells exploded in the cockpit, and Col Milton and Captain Everett, the pilot, were both painfully wounded. The Wing nevertheless ploughed through and bombed the target, although 13 aircraft were lost in the attack. The 91st Group's bombs went astray due to structural damage in the lead ship which affected the mounting of the bombsight, but the 381st's bombs fell true and straight on the MPI, and these bombs and those of the wings that followed did a complete demolition job on an important aircraft factory."

-"Mighty Eighth War Diary" pp. 165-66

"Over 900 bombers were detailed and 886 actually dispatched over the Essex coast for plants in the Leipzig area; although the two leading combat wings attacked an FW 190 repair depot at Zwickau in the same area which, apart from its own importance, served to mislead the enemy as to the chief objectives...Soon after the leading bombers of the 3rd Division had turned north-east after a south-easterly thrust across Belgium, they were met by an estimated 200 enemy interceptors. Spaatz was correct in his speculation that the Luftwaffe would rise to meet strikes against oil plants, although at this point the enemy could not have known the bombers' ultimate destination. From 12.25 hrs. for 35 minutes, the two composite 4th wing formations headed for Zwickau experienced determined oppostion. Mass saturation tactics were pressed so close that at least one rammed a B-17. From this ordeal the 4th emerged in some disorder. Colonel Vandevanter flying with his 385th Group in the lead, ordered the formation to reduce speed so that others could reform; this undoubtedly added to the good bombing later achieved-- the 385th managed to place 97% of their bombs within 2,000 ft of the aiming point. Four times the 4th Wing was attacked on the mission, losing 11 Fortresses, 7 from the 447th group. The 3rd division's 45th and 13th wings attacked the Brux oil plant leaving it burning and inoperative, while Liberators of 2nd Division achieved similar results at Zeitz and Bohlen; great damage too, was inflicted at Merseburg and Lutzendorf by the 1st Division."

--"The Mighty Eighth" p. 141-42 by Roger Freeman

"Lt. Col Ross Milton, formerly of Polebrook and now of the 91st, was allergic to tough rides. It seemed every time he led the Wing, he would ineveitably wind up in the front position, whether the mission was so laid out or not, and the mission would meet violent opposition. Oschersleben was no exception. Leading the combat wing formation, he found himself in front and, for the most part, without fighter escort almost throughout the trip. Over an hour before reaching the target, the Wing was jumped by a large number of Jerry fighters. The lead aircraft was badly hit. An engine was lost, several cannon shells exploded in the cockpit, and Col Milton and Captain Everett, the pilot, were both painfully wounded. The Wing nevertheless ploughed through and bombed the target, although 13 aircraft were lost in the attack. The 91st Group's bombs went astray due to structural damage in the lead ship which affected the mounting of the bombsight, but the 381st's bombs fell true and straight on the MPI, and these bombs and those of the wings that followed did a complete demolition job on an important aircraft factory."

-"Mighty Eighth War Diary" pp. 165-66

At one point Albert Speer told Hitler that if something were not done about the American bombers, in six months the economy would be crippled -- this at a time when it was rare to have more than 100 B-17s available for operations.

Walt

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